Risk Memo Procedures

Associate Professor

Education

M.S. 1997, St. Petersburg State Technical University

Ph.D. 2001, University of Arizona

Research interests

My research interests encompass broad areas of space physics, plasma physics, and computational physics with applications to heliophysics, cosmic-ray physics, are particle transport. Most of my recent work is on four important aspect of the solar wind – Local Interstellar Medium interaction:

Transport of galactic cosmic rays in turbulent plasma flows in the heliosphere and beyond,

Acceleration and transport of energetic charged particles and their effect on the solar wind and the termination shock,

Particle-wave interactions, scattering, instabilities

Plasma physics of the heliospheric interface.

My two principal research methods are theoretical analysis and numerical simulations using high-performance computers. Such modeling efforts are closely coordinated with space and ground based observations, including the Voyager interstellar mission and IBEX.

The figure on the left shows a simulated heliopause draped by interstellar magnetic field lines as "seen" by a cosmic ray particle approaching the solar system from interstellar space. The figure on the right shows two simulated stochastic trajectories of galactic protons inside the heliosphere.

Current graduate students

Yihong "Shirley" Wu

Ph.D. expected 2016

Dissertation: “Pickup ion production in the global heliosphere and heliosheath”.

Past graduate students

Udara Senanayake

Ph.D. 2015

Dissertation: “Acceleration and transport of anomalous cosmic rays: effects of shock geometry and magnetic field topology”.